It has become a common practice these days for people to look up about a restaurant online before they actually set their mind on visiting the place. Thus, having a strong online presence has become the necessity of the hour. 77 percent of US citizens have a social media profile. Considering this, it just makes sense to utilize social media as a potential restaurant marketing platform. However, an online presence does not only mean creating social media pages or integrating your restaurants with the various online delivery platforms, but it also involves the need of crafting an informative restaurant website, that will be a point of contact between your restaurants and your customers.
In the US F&B industry having a restaurant website will surely increase your online presence, and assist you in seeking genuine feedback and reviews from your customers. In addition, collecting customer data and building a robust CRM will become a cakewalk.
A restaurant website will enable you to have your own delivery app, mobile, and a website ordering app, which will allow you go that extra mile to serve your customers by delivering food at their doorstep.
How To Employ Your Restaurant Website To Boost Your Business
Here are the ways you can employ your restaurant website to attract customers and also increase your sales.
1. Increase The Online Presence
A restaurant website will help you in ways more than one. It will help you reach out to your customers in the best ways possible. Build a restaurant website which is extremely well-informative, well-optimized and conveys all the necessary information to the customers. It should be updated religiously so that your customers are in tune with the current changes in your restaurant. Having a restaurant website increases credibility to a great extent. The major things that should be given due importance while making the restaurant website in the US, that will increase your online presence by leaps and bound are:
- Optimize your restaurant website as per the SEO norms, with appropriate keywords as and when required, however, do not go overboard and stuff more than what is required. Update your website, regularly as per the Google algorithms. Such actions will help your restaurant website to rank top on the Google search engine when a customer searches anything related to your restaurant. This will not only increase your online presence but will also help in increasing the customer trial base.
- Inform your customers about the history of your restaurant, and what has inspired you to venture into the F&B space in the first place.
- Make sure you have a clear call-to-action mentioned on your restaurant website. Phone number, email address, the name of the manager and the owner along with the direction to reach the restaurant must be clearly mentioned.
- Customers generally visit a restaurant website to check the restaurant menu. Hence, make sure that the entire menu is clearly available. Try and make the online menu clean, and easy to be read. Avoid using PDF or scanned versions of a restaurant menu, as they are not clear and the customers would not like the hard work involved in comprehending them.
- Upload pictures of your restaurant, the dining space, the entrance, and customers dining at leisure at your restaurant. Make sure that you upload periodically to avoid stagnation. Whenever there is an event, make sure that you start uploading pictures of your restaurant while it gears up for the event, this will help you create apprehension among your customers. You can also have a blog on your restaurant website, through which you can spread the knowledge about food, recent trends and the like.
- Clickable social media icons of your restaurant’s social media pages must be available on your restaurant website, this will increase your reach exponentially.
2. Online Ordering
Having a restaurant website will increase your online sales incredibly. Hence, customers will not have to rely just only on the online delivery platforms to order from your restaurant. Hence make sure that the ‘order now’ button is visible and properly placed on your restaurant website. Generally, it is considered that placing the button on the top right corner, with bold and contrasting colors will attract the attention of the customers. If you are venturing into online ordering make sure that you have your online menu which is high on customer interface. Make the online ordering process simple, so that customers can place the order with a couple of clicks. If you have a robust restaurant POS that comes with mobile and website ordering app, then your online ordering process will be made simple like never before. Remember, most customers get disgruntled with a complicated process and might choose some other restaurant for this, which might be a severe loss for your restaurant.
3. Get Genuine Reviews
Getting customer reviews increases the credibility of a restaurant greatly. When a customer visits your restaurant website and finds a five-star rating or a positive review, it does make a difference in their mind. Reviews on your website will help you carve a place for yourself in the restaurant industry.
Getting reviews from your customers is easy when a set process is followed. Instead of taking reviews on paper-based feedback forms, get on board a POS that comes with a Feedback App. This will ensure that you can take customer reviews on the floor of the restaurant, and hence if you come across a customer who isn’t happy with the service provided, you will have the time to undo the damage done, with an apology or a complimentary dish. In addition this, these feedback apps when integrated with the POS and synced with the restaurant website, the reviews will automatically get updated on the website. This will not only reduce manual labor to a great extent, but it will also streamline your feedback taking process immensely.
4. Build a Powerful CRM
The customer details of those who place the orders or the ones who review your restaurant on the restaurant website will automatically get synced with the CRM database. This will help you build a robust repository of rich customer data which you can, nurture through SMS and email marketing to convert them into loyal customers. A comprehensive restaurant CRM will come in handy and will help you run targeted marketing campaigns.
Hope you have garnered a comprehensive understanding of how having a stellar restaurant website will help you bolster your sales exponentially. Crafting a restaurant website with a well-optimized online menu will a isn’t an easy task, hence it is advisable for you to take professional help if required. And once you have these in place, it will definitely help you to promote your restaurant online keep you ahead of your competitors in the US market while ensuring that your business has an overflowing cash register.
